Many people, for instance, those about to graduate high school, are looking for educational programs. In the distant past, guidance counselor offices contained countless brochures from various institutions such as colleges, universities, trade schools, etc. With the wide-spread availability of the Internet (World Wide Web), the art has migrated to an online set of catalogs. In such, each school or institution (educational/training provider) has a web site and, one feature of that web site is descriptions of programs, tracts, degree programs, classes, etc. This is a vast improvement over paper catalogs, but neither provides a robust approach to finding the right program for the educational seeker.
There are several weaknesses in the current approach of finding an educational program. First, the educational seeker, looking for a certain type of program, doesn't necessarily know which educational/training provider offer such a program. For example, if a educational seeker from California is interested in studying law to become an attorney, they don't necessarily know about a small private school in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and, therefore, are not prone to visit that educational/training provider's web site to check out the possible class work. Secondly, each educational/training provider's web site is structured differently making it more difficult for the educational seeker to locate the programs once they find the educational/training provider's web site. Some educational/training providers organize by subject, some by degree, etc. There is no normalized hierarchy and/or format for such web sites, making it tedious to navigate through them to find the right program for the educational seeker.
Thirdly, there is no way to find programs based upon specific criterion. For example, if a educational seeker wants to attend a school that has a degree program leading to a master's degree in biology and also wants to have a minor degree in music, the educational seeker must visit many educational/training provider web sites to see if they offer each, having no way to search for all educational/training providers that offer both together. Another example is a educational seeker who desires a degree in chemistry with a minor in music and wants to study in the Pacific Northwest. Again, current technology does not permit such a search.
Additionally, the educational seeker needs to compare one institution to another. Upon finding a few institutions in the Pacific Northwest that offer a degree in chemistry with a minor in music, the educational seeker often needs to compare class schedules, degree requirements, entry requirements, scholarships available, credit hours required, required courses, elective courses available, cost per credit hour, housing, etc. Currently, no single system provides consolidated data for multiple educational/training providers.
Often it is difficult for the educational seeker to determine from an educational/training provider's web site, which location is the parent campus as opposed to a smaller, satellite campus; details on the offered programs; and availability of courses, etc. To get such information, the educational seeker often needs to request a brochure/catalog or call the school.
Prior advances have not addressed a consolidated, searchable database of course and/or program description information. US Pat. Pub. No. 2007/0122791 to Sperle describes a method of updating course catalogs, but does not access a multitude of educational/training provider databases to develop a database of course and/or program information. US Pat. Pub. No. 2008/0270166 describes a method of transferring a educational seeker's transcript over the web, but does not access a multitude of educational/training provider databases to develop a database of course and/or program information.
In addition, governments are charged with the task of reducing unemployment. To this end, it is desired to have a system that, coupled with an workforce management application, identifies positions available in a certain area and, when a limited number of such positions are available, the system suggests related positions and, if additional training is needed to file those positions, presents local courses for the individual to train in the area of the positions that are in higher demand. No such system is currently available. For example, if a jobseeker is trying to find a position as a certified network administrator and there are few or no positions that match that criteria in the area of the jobseeker but there are related positions such as Web Development, but the jobseeker lacks a skill generally needed for Web Development (e.g. C++ programming), a desired feature of a system will identify the positions available and the needed course and provide a list of courses that the jobseeker can take to prepare and apply for the Web Development positions.
In another example, a job seeker has skills to be an administrative assistant, but a search of open positions finds very few. The search finds several positions as a paralegal, but the job seeker lacks training to be a paralegal, but in the prior art, the system did not present a list of paralegal training programs provided in the locale of the jobseeker that, if completed, qualified the jobseeker for the open positions as a paralegal.
Systems that “spider” the Internet for job postings are known. For example, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/393,394, filed on Mar. 30, 2006, titled, “SYSTEM, METHOD AND COMPUTER PROGRAM PRODUCTS FOR CREATING AND MAINTAINING A CONSOLIDATED JOBS DATABASE” describes a system for spidering job postings from various web sited containing job postings and storing the job postings in a searchable database. This patent application is here within included by reference.
What is needed is a system that will identify educational program opportunities, consolidate the individual opportunities into a central location and provide advanced searching capabilities to the educational seeker for finding educational opportunities that match the educational seeker's needs and desires.